Presentation programs, typically in the form of slide show presentations, are commonly used to present information to an audience. Such presentation programs include, for example, PowerPoint® available from Microsoft Corporation and Keynote® available from Apple Corporation. Slide show presentations are generally shown on computer or television screens, or projected onto large projection screens. Such slide shows have many advantages over conventional visual aids such as pamphlets, chalkboards, flip charts, posters, and overhead transparencies. For example, slide show presentations are relatively easy to make and do not require the purchase and/or production of printed materials.
Each slide show presentation generally includes a number of individual pages or slides that contain text or graphics arranged thereon. Slide show presentations can be generated, saved, and run on a computing device, such as a desktop or laptop computer. Conventionally, the advancement from one slide to the next is achieved in one of the following two ways. Either someone (e.g., the presenter or another person) must access the computer directly to enter a keystroke or mouse-click to advance the presentation, or the presenter must use a conventional remote advancement device (e.g., a clicker) that is connected to the computer (e.g., via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device) to advance the presentation. However, both of these methods of advancement have disadvantages.
Directly accessing the computer to advance the presentation is disadvantageous because the presenter must be at the computer in order to change the slide of the presentation program. Thus, the presenter either must remain physically near the computer during the entire presentation or the presenter must return to the computer between slides. This can be a distraction both to the presenter and to the presenter's audience.
The use of a conventional remote advancement device (e.g., a clicker) and USB connector also has its disadvantages. Such devices can usually only be operated with the matching USB linking device. Thus, different presenters who do not have the same device remote advancement device cannot make use of the USB linking device. In addition, such devices are often misplaced or lost and the presenter then must resort to advancing the presentation using the direct access approach discussed above.
Accordingly, there is a need for a more efficient and user-friendly device that permits remote advancement of presentation programs.